


Bitch

by Teland



Category: due South
Genre: Backstory, Domestic Violence, F/M, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-10-15
Updated: 1999-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-28 22:28:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21144239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teland/pseuds/Teland
Summary: It gets lonely on pedestals.





	Bitch

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by LaT, beta-read by Maxine.

When I wake up in the morning, the closest   
thing I come to softness is the underwear at   
the back of the drawer. I don't actually wear   
them, but it's nice to know they're there. 

Nice to know I could, if I wanted to.

I wear cotton. Lycra if it's going to be a short   
day. It's never a short day, but sometimes it   
looks as though it will be and I can give myself   
a little room to maneuver. It's all the same   
under the suits, right?

And the suits are tailored, expensive things. More   
than I can strictly afford -- even when there was   
more than one income coming in to my   
household.

Mine. Even when Ray was there, it was always   
mine. He handed me the reins the first moment   
I looked into his eyes and thanked him for   
humiliating himself. See, the way I've got it   
figured is this -- That asshole showing up with   
the gun was His Moment. There I was, there the   
bad guy was, and there he was. And he... pissed   
his pants like the scared little boy he was.

And I ran like hell -- like the scared little girl I  
was.

But see, *I* was there. And so he wasn't supposed  
to be a little boy, he was supposed to be a man.

And he screwed that up, and I let him believe that  
he hadn't, and so he was a man. By my graces.

How fucked up is that?

I'm twelve years old and I'm the be-all and end-all  
of another twelve year old's *manhood*.

I loved it. 

Of course I did -- you would've too.

And I loved it for years. 

Don't get me wrong -- we went to different schools   
the whole way through. It couldn't possibly have   
been any other way, since Ray never got the   
grades to pull a scholarship and my father was   
who he was. 

So I would see him here and there, every few   
months when he could creep into my neighborhood,  
into my church, next to me in the pew where I saw   
a lifetime of hypocrisy and *service* to something   
the priest didn't understand... I left the Church   
when I turned sixteen. Mother was proud of my   
independence. Father may or may not have noticed.

Ray left the Church as soon as I told him. For   
years, I told myself he left it because he agreed   
with my impassioned reasoning, and I suppose   
it's possible...

So I only got him rarely, and when I had him he   
would gaze at me like I was supposed to be gazing  
at the Madonna and I was the most beautiful   
angel ever to mistakenly fall to earth. By the time  
I was sixteen I had zits and terminally greasy hair  
that simply would not feather the right way and   
a roll of belly that I had until I joined my first   
gym and will have again the second I stop for a   
few minutes... but I was stunning.

How many sixteen year olds actually believe that?  
None of the ones I get ahold of, that's for sure.   
The best they can hope for is sexy. Me, I had my   
own personal self-esteem factory.

Best of all, all he ever wanted from me was... me.   
And when I was a teenager, me was pretty easy   
to achieve. Talk about hair, talk about clothes,   
talk about Carter and malaise and the laziness   
and ingratitude of the American people... whatever   
I wanted. Watch Ray go all rapt until it was time   
for me to go -- so far as I knew, *he* never had   
to go anywhere -- and then watch him get... soft.

Very soft, like anywhere I touched him I would   
just have to pet him, too. Roll him between my   
fingers like dough and stretch him out for...   
whatever. So I would just stroke the hands I   
knew would be rough from the hours and hours  
of shop class (I could smell it on him, oil and   
cheap cigarettes and the industrial soap   
designed to hide it..), smile, and go. 

Because he wanted it that way. 

All I ever wanted was to kiss him breathless and   
see if I could make the same noises Donna   
Summer could. All he wanted to do was waltz and   
swing and hold hands like the dream of his   
parents. Or probably my parents. I don't know, I   
don't really like going there. The one time I  
slipped my tongue in his mouth he tore away   
from me like I had the plague.

He actually *did* ask me if I was all right. And   
then he stammered and stammered something   
about waiting and goodness and behaving and   
kissed me on my cheek and ran. 

When he came back -- I never really doubted he   
would -- it was all back to normal. He came with  
roses and an apology I was too shocked to stop   
him from making and a promise to never, ever   
treat me like anything but the lady I was and   
everything went back to normal. 

I found the first Gold Coast boy who was good   
enough or bored enough not to come in his pants at  
the idea and blew him. 

And then I found another one.

And then I reveled -- *reveled* -- in telling Ray   
all about it in nasty, twisted detail.

And then I refused to see him for six months,   
and when I did he didn't even come *close* to   
letting me apologize, letting me try to make it  
up to him. He wouldn't hear it. He covered my  
mouth with his hand and then kissed it,   
pressing his palm against my lips.

So I learned how to dance, how to wear pretty   
dresses and prettier shoes that looked nothing   
like the ones in the clubs or the cooler streets.   
And I felt appropriately guilty whenever   
someone's soft and sweet or grubby and dirty   
hands touched me, and sometimes I even cried   
after they made me come.

And when he asked me to marry him I didn't   
make him wait any longer than graduation   
from college. We got married the day after I   
graduated and my parents were there and   
happy for me and I remember being so   
damned *surprised*... His mother was there.   
His father... wasn't.

Midway through his second full year as a cop   
and his dad was only just starting to make his  
life hell for it. Sometimes I wonder what   
Mother would've been like had I not been so   
very, very good and strong and so very, very   
married to a pretty doormat.

I cried at the wedding. I sniffled until we got   
to the hotel. Ray assures me everyone who   
saw the two of us together gave him the   
foulest death looks imaginable. "I'm gonna   
die young, Stel, I'm tellin ya..."

I cursed him out royally in the honeymoon   
suite, ripped my veil in two and tossed one half  
off the balcony -- the other half he caught, of   
course -- and threatened to use his face to beat   
the stuffing out of the honest-to-God   
heart-shaped mattress and then I cried some   
more and then he asked me if I was done. 

Not very politely at all.

I looked at him, really looked at him for the   
first time that day, that week, probably even   
that month and I saw this strange mix of   
amusement, anger, and lust and I stopped.   
Yeah, I was done. What was he gonna do about  
it?

And he spent the whole night teaching me   
damned near every important lesson about sex   
I've ever learned and then it was...

I don't know what it was, really. Even after we   
stopped having sex *every* day I was mostly in  
this haze. Law school was hard, Ray supported   
us, and he looked damned good in the uniform,   
out of the uniform, any which way he could but  
especially with me in his arms.

I wasn't thinking, I wasn't even really feeling. I  
was... believing. He was so confident, so sure,   
so real about everything once his pants came   
down that I just knew I was missing something   
every other time.

But I never found it, not ever. I must be blind, I   
have to be blind, but I never found it. 

And we fought like people and fucked like animals  
and sometimes we danced our way through it all   
and he could make me laugh and I could make   
him cry and we could make each other come   
blood if we'd ever put our minds to it and it   
would've been great.

Until the afterglow wore off and I put on my  
pants, his pants, and also a halo of strength and  
purity that never tarnished too much to be   
wiped clean with a soft, sweet kiss and a promise  
to never, ever leave me.

Never, ever, ever. 

I left the first time I slapped him. 

He talked me back and I slapped him again   
eventually and we had raw, bruising sex and   
afterwards it took him three entire hours to   
apologize.

And then I ran away for more or less good.

And I wear the right clothes and I wear the   
right face and spend too much time in the gym  
and when the thought hits me I... break. 

I'm lonely now and it's all the same as it ever   
was because the only one who can love a   
princess is a prince and Ray... Ray would   
sooner gnaw his own leg off than jump on a   
pedestal with me. It gets cold. And I'm lonely. 

I am lonely. 

I pray, idly, falsely for change. 

I pray that someday I'll stop believing that just   
one more push, just one more in the right direction  
with the right amount of cruelty and some good,  
old-fashioned domestic violence I'll have the man   
he was supposed to be. The man that had, once   
upon a time, been a boy who'd pissed his pants   
because he was afraid.

For now, though... I pray for the strength to step  
down from the pedestal, once and for all.

end.


End file.
